WJLA-TV(ANNAPOLIS, Md.) — Reporters are tweeting from inside the building of Maryland newsroom where an active shooting scene is unfolding.
Phil Davis, a courts and crime reporter for the Capital Gazette, a daily Annapolis newspaper, wrote that a single gunman shot through the glass door to the office and then opened fired on employees.
Davis said he was taking cover under his desk when he heard the gunman reload after shooting several people.
Davis said that he was tweeting while waiting to be interviewed be police.
“Can’t say much more and don’t want to declare anyone dead, but it’s bad,” he wrote.
Anthony Messenger, an intern for the newspaper, pleaded for help on Twitter, saying there was an active shooter in the building.
The Anne Arundel Police Department confirmed that an active shooter was at the building, adding that there were multiple injuries. It is unclear whether anyone died in the shooting.
“We’re doing everything we can to secure that building,” a law enforcement officer told ABC Washington, D.C. affiliate WJLA-TV on camera.
Pat Ferguson, another reporter for the Capital Gazette, was across the street when he received a call from the Baltimore Sun news desk, warning him not to return to the newsroom, he told ABC News.
The Capital Gazette is owned by the Baltimore Sun.
Employees were led from the building with their hands up and were brought across the street to a reunification center at the Annapolis Mall, where they were interviewed by authorities, Ferguson said.
Tom Marquardt, the former Editor of the Capital Gazette, told ABC News he still has a lot of friends who work there and that the “suspense is really terrible” as he waits for news on what happened to them.
Marquardt said the newsroom is on the ground floor and described it as being a very open room.
Newspaper staff had dealt with threats in the past and have always been concerned about security, Marquardt said, adding that angry readers in the past threatened the newspaper over who it endorsed for an election.
Marquardt personally got threats, as did others, but they were mostly anonymous, he said.
Other offices in the building include offices for doctors, lawyers and an orthodontist, Ferguson said.
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